


Water Water Everywhere (But Not A Drop To Drink)

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Misogyny, Waterbending & Waterbenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 14:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20695031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Katara grows up and learns to navigate the big bad world and her place in it.





	Water Water Everywhere (But Not A Drop To Drink)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [The_Wavesinger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger) in the [iibb2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/iibb2019) collection. 

> ...my id is apparently issuefic. Um. Idk?

Water is yin and yang, ebb and flow. The Moon and the Ocean, forever working together.

~

The first time Katara bends, she’s three, and she’s running while holding a cup of water.

Outside the huts, they have to run, to stop the water from freezing over (and even then, sometimes, it doesn’t work) but inside—

“Katara,” Kya says sharply, “Stop that.”

Katara ignores her, giggling, her face flushed.

“Katara—” Kya stops mid-sentence, wincing as her daughter falls to the ground. She waits for the _splosh _of water hitting the floor.

The sound never appears.

A slightly misshapen orb of water hands suspended in the air above Katara, who is giggling again.

“Mama, look what I can do!”

Kya stares at Katara. _Her daughter is a waterbender._

~

“You can’t ever show anyone,” Kya tells Katara, kneeling down so that she’s eye-to-eye with her daughter. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Why, Mama?” Katara doesn’t understand. She can make pretty shapes with the water. Why should she hide it?

Kya bites her lip, smoothing her hand over Katara’s hair. “You’re a waterbender, sweetie, and that’s very special, but sometimes, bad people don’t like it when other people bend water.”

“Oh!” Katara’s eyes light up in comprehension. “Like the Fire Nation?”

“Exactly like the Fire Nation, sweetie.” An unreadable expression flits across Kya’s face. “Now you know why you can’t show anyone?”

“Even Gran-Gran? And Dada? And Sokka?”

“You can show them,” Kya tells her daughter, a small smile blooming on her lips. “But no one else, not unless you trust whoever you’re telling with your life. Promise?”

“Promise,” Katara says fervently. “I promise.”

~

When the big Fire Nation man appears in their hut, Katara’s too scared to do anything but run, like her mother tells her to. It’s only years later, at almost nine, that she begins to doubt obeying her mother’s last command.

She could have saved her mother, Katara knows, if she’d just been a little stronger, a little smarter. She could have saved her.

Katara could waterbend, even then. She could have chased the Fire Nation man off. Just making him slip on the ice would have been enough. And if that hadn’t worked, she could have given herself up. Her mother was protecting her, and now she’s dead, and it’s all Katara’s fault.

Katara closes her eyes against the tears.

It’s all her fault. But she can maybe make up for that.

She’ll rescue the other waterbenders who were taken by the Fire Nation. Somehow, she’ll do it. And if they’re not there, if they’re dead, too—

The Fire Nation will _regret_ ever stepping foot in the South Pole.

The ferocity of the thought startles her, for a moment, but the words feel almost natural.

_They will pay. They will pay for what they did, for what they’re doing. Every single one of them will pay._

But first, she has to learn proper waterbending. The rest will come later.

~

Sokka complains when Katara sneaks out at night to stare at the Moon, says it’s dangerous, says she could be kidnapped. He doesn’t ever tell, though, so she puts up with his grumbles.

It’s worth it.

It worth it, to feel the Moon on her skin, power flowing through her veins as she bends. Not much, not enough to make a wave—pun not intended, that’s Sokka’s department, not hers—but she _bends_, and it’s beautiful, and delicate, and the rush that courses through her veins is _worth it_.

On nights like these, when the full Moon is shining, she can feel the heartbeat of the water that surrounds them, feel the power that’s at her fingertips.

She can’t break through, can’t ever break the barrier between her and that power. No matter how many times she tries, there’s still a wall. She can only reach drips of power, so she cradles every bit close.

She can feel the water thrumming in her veins. It’s frustrating, terrifying and delightful all at once.

~

Katara is ten. Katara is ten, and ten is old enough to feel the _breaking_.

There is Katara, and there is Sokka, and there is Dad, and there is—

There’s no Mom.

She’s trying, she’s trying so hard to fill the gaps Mom left, has been trying for the past three years, but it’s not enough, she’s not enough.

And then Dad goes off to war.

And there is Katara, and there is Sokka.

That year, Sokka _changes_. Sokka puts the world between him and her, pushes everything away so only a great big expanse of chilly water holds them together, and he becomes something he’s never been before.

And there is Katara. There is Katara, who is ten, and old enough to feel the breaking, but not old enough to put it into words, not old enough to fix it.

~

Around the time she turns eleven, the women stop holding their tongues quite as much as they used to around her. None of them address their stories directly to her, of course, but she’s not shooed off either, and—

And Katara hears.

She hears about the Fire Nation’s penchant (except that word is too light, too light for what they do) for senseless killing, about the genocide of the Air Nomads, about countless cruelties and injustices perpetuated against the Earth Kingdom, and—always spoken about in hushed tones—the raids that destroyed their tribe.

(What she doesn’t know, of course, is that the unsavory details are left out, the tales of murder and mutilation that turn even the strongest stomachs, the women mindful of attentive ears. There’ll be time yet to tell of those, or so they think.)

_How can someone do that to another person?_ Katara wonders. And, _I will never, ever be like them._

~

Katara is twelve when it occurs to her to wonder why the women were left behind when the men went to war in their dark ships. Can’t they fight as well as the men can? Aren’t they better choices to fight a war than the fourteen-year-olds who’d gone to war so long ago?

They haven’t even been trained to fight, and that’s—_stupid_, Katara decides. What if a Fire Navy ship appears when there are no warriors—men—in the village? Sokka’s boomerang and her bending are the only weapons they have, and they’re not strong enough. Will the women huddle in a circle and stare, dead-eyed, as the Navy grabs whoever it wants to take with them, as it destroys their village?

The image terrifies her, chilling her bones more than the polar ice can, and, with effort, she pushes it into the corner of her mind.

“Why don’t women learn to fight?” Katara asks Gran-Gran later, as she’s unfreezing water so that their clothes can be washed (because they might hide her bending, but Gran-Gran still finds a way to make use of it. She’d have done well in battle).

Gran-Gran looks at her for the longest time. “Because we don’t go to battle.”

Katara knows that’s not an answer. “Gran-Gran—”

“I know,” Gran-Gran cuts Katara off, places a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know, Katara.”

“You don’t _understand_,” Katara cries. She shakes off her grandmother’s hand. “You’re old, and you’re happy here, and you don’t mind, but _I _do!”

“Katara, mind your tongue.”

“Sorry,” Katara mutters, but she’s not sorry at all, because she’s right, Gran-Gran knows that, and they’re all going to die, and it’s not _fair_.

“Look at me, Katara.”

Katara does, unwillingly.

“I know,” Gran-Gran says, her voice uncharacteristically soft, “that it’s hard, but it’s worse in other places. Here, you get to choose some things,” she reaches out, as if to touch the necklace around Katara’s neck, but stops herself, “and I know we’ve got a long way to go, but if you can’t fix the problem, talking won’t help.”

When Katara’s frown doesn’t disappear, Gran-Gran adds, “I promise you we’ll find you a master soon.”

“Thank you,” Katara says, forcing down her bubbling resentment. She’s going to get a master soon (although Gran-Gran’s definition of ‘soon’, she suspects, differs from Katara’s) and that’s all that matters.

Right?

~

He’s her brother, and she loves him, but sometimes, Sokka can be a sexist pig.

She’s not supposed to say anything, Katara knows she’s not, but—

Enough is enough. He doesn’t have a right to dictate her life and make her his polar-dog to fetch and carry things. Katara knows that he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, doesn’t _mean_ to imply that she’s less than he is, but he’s doing it unconsciously, and she really can’t stand it.

Sokka and traditions can go take a dip in the ocean together, Katara decides. She is _not _cleaning up after his messes just because she’s a girl.

~

Aang moves differently than she does.

She’d thought that she could learn to break the wall by watching him, by watching him play with air, but she couldn’t be more wrong. Airbending is...different from waterbending.

Not light and gentle. Adaptable, yes, flowing, _of course_, but waterbending is different from airbending in a way that makes Katara want to gnash her teeth every time she watches, from the corner of her eye, as he bends the air around him as easy as breathing.

Air and water are different, then. Katara realizes that she might have to wait even longer for a master, and anger pricks at her.

...But Aang is innocent. Aang doesn’t know what the Fire Nation did to his people, and Katara doesn’t _want_ him to know. She wants to protect him. Or, fail that, at least support him. Make it a little easier for him.

She chooses Aang. Waterbending can wait, because he_ needs_ her.

And later, when it turns out he’s the Avatar and needs to master waterbending...well, good turns _do_ pay off, don’t they?

~

Katara knows the Fire Nation killed people. Seeing it with her own eyes shouldn’t change anything.

It does, though. There are so many helmets on the floor, and they didn’t even bury their _own_ dead. What kind of savages are they, to be so callous?

They killed an entire race, and Katara can feel the familiar anger welling up inside her, overflowing—

And Aang is angry too. Except his anger manifests in swirling storms and glowing eyes and tattoos.

For a moment, Katara wishes she could _do_ that, but then she takes a second look, and suddenly, she’s terrified in a way she was only once before, because Aang isn’t calming down, and he’s going to hurt himself, and he’s going to hurt them.

She fights through the fear and reaches him, holds onto him, tries to pour calm into him, because that’s all she can do.

~

Aang is better at waterbending than her.

It cuts deep, the fact that he can breach the barrier, that he can feel the power and _use_ it in a way she can’t. He’s the Avatar, it’s_ supposed _to be easy for him, and it’s not his fault.

Still, it’s annoying when she works hard and drains her sweat and tears and sometimes blood to learn one measly move, and Aang masters it in five minutes tops. He never has to _work _for it, and Katara wonders, enviously, what it would be like to have everything in life come naturally to you.

The thrill of bending, the feeling of connectedness to the water—that’s what Katara’s striving for. That’s what Aang has.

She doesn’t hate him—of course she doesn’t, she couldn’t, he’s _Aang_—but it’s still easier to practice alone.

~

In the places they stop at, Katara learns things.

She learns that it’s not safe for a woman or a girl to be out alone at night. Even in the daytime, there is always a risk of being catcalled or...touched.

The world isn’t a nice place. Katara knew that already. The world isn’t a fair place. Katara knew _that _already, too. This shouldn’t shock her, it shouldn’t, and it definitely shouldn’t make her blood boil as much as it does.

Let it go, she tells herself, let it go. Desperately, over and over again.

One step at a time, and the Southern Water Tribe is ahead of others. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter. If the women here are used to it, who is Katara to complain or fight?

They’ve dealt with it longer; they should know best.

Only—she wishes she could stop it. And the next time they’re anywhere near civilization, she _does_ try to stop it, but—

The Fire Nation soldiers have stopped most of the harassment. Probably so that they can harass more women themselves, Katara thinks bitterly, and it’s frustrating, but she’s not stupid. She can’t take all those soldiers at once.

She wishes she could.

~

The thing is, Katara loves Sokka. She loves Sokka, but he’s such a _boneheaded idiot_ sometimes. It’s no wonder the Kyoshi Warriors think him beneath them. Women can’t be warriors? What kind of thought is that? Can a person with a drip of intelligence think that? Can a person with a waterbending sister really think that?

Katara wonders whether he doesn’t count her as a woman, or whether he doesn’t count her as a warrior. Either option hurts.

_Why do I have to choose?_ Katara asks herself as she stares into the mirror that night. _Why can’t I be both?_

Her reflection ripples as a cloud passes over the Moon, but doesn’t reply.

~

A bit of coal. One young man. Katara.

That’s all it takes to start a revolution. That’s all it takes to give people back their power, all it takes for them to be strong again.

They thought they had lost, before; now, they think they’re winning. So they win. They win, against the Fire Nation, and they take back what’s theirs.

Katara will always, always remember this as one of the best days of her life.

~

The blue glow of healing seems _easy_, at first, more natural than breathing, and Katara thinks, for a moment, _finally, something I’m good at_.

Two seconds later, the strain is on her again. It’s _different_, with healing, not like pulling water through a wall. More like pulling it up from within herself, giving parts of her that should never have been given to the world.

Whatever it is, it’s hard, it’s exhausting, it’s _terrifying_.

That night, Katara cries herself to sleep. It seems like she’ll never be a proper watebender after all.

~

Jet is brave and strong. Jet wants to bring down the Fire Nation.

Jet is also a _killer_.

_This is not a cause_, Katara wants to yell at him, _those are lives_. They’re innocents. People who don’t deserve to die. People who’ve done nothing wrong beyond existing, beyond being born in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

“We’re setting them _free_,” Jet shouts at them.

He’s crazy. He’s crazy and wrong, and what kind of side is he on, what kind of person is he, if he thinks it’s OK to kill people like that? Fire Nation through and through, in heart if not in blood.

“You’re little kids, you know nothing,” he screams. “You don’t understand!”

Katara remembers her mother, and the man in their hut, and fire. She_ does _understand. She understands the need for revenge, to take back what was stolen. She understands hate, and despair.

She understands all too well that they’ll be the same as the Fire Nation the moment Jet and his band of merry thieves get what they want.

The Fire Nation is the enemy. Not innocents.

_Screw you too, Jet,_ she thinks, and turns away.

~

Warmth flows through her hands, onto the body, shifting through chi pathways, until her ‘patient’ is fully healed. It should feel good.

It doesn’t.

The satisfaction of the healing is dulled by the fact that it’s what she’s _supposed _to do. They have no right to dictate her life, what she can or can’t accomplish with her bending.

She can’t be a warrior? She’s female, so she can’t fight?

She’ll show them. She’ll show them _all_.

Katara has as much cause to fight as any of their men—more cause, really, she doubts they’ve ever so much as lost a polar-bear-dog to the Fire Nation, the _cowards_. And she’s not going to stand by idly and _heal_.

She can heal, yes, and it’s a good and great thing. She _wants _to heal. But she doesn’t want to_ only_ heal.

Katara is a warrior, and somehow or the other, she’ll learn to be one, stupid rules be damned.

~

She’ll get _Master _Pakku, she _will_. She _won’t_ be at the beck and call of some stupid old men, apologizing for _their_ stupid faults. There’s enough self-respect in her that she knows when they’re wrong, when their rules are just plain _unfair_.

She is Katara, daughter of Kaya and Hakoda, and she is a waterbender and a _warrior_.

They’ll see. They’ll _all _see.

The water gathers inside her waiting for direction, and when she makes her move—

The wall _weakens_. It doesn’t break, but it weakens enough that the trickle turns into a gush. Everything blurs inside her ears, the world going fuzzy before snapping suddenly into focus.

Katara thinks, suddenly, that maybe she can_ do_ this. Not for long, maybe, not enough to win, but she’s strong. She can show them that women are strong.

And for her, it’s a victory. Even a tiny breach in that wall is monumental.

Katara has _won._

_~_

When Master Pakku calls her his best student, she’s proud, more proud than she could have ever imagined being.

It’s not enough, she knows she can do more, the wall is still there—

But the warmth inside her is pleasant, and she likes it. She’ll treasure it for some time, for a long time if she’s given the choice.

(Yugoda’s farewells are less proud, and Katara has to push the shred of bitterness inside her away. It’d been naïve to think that she didn’t have to choose, and her choice had been necessary.

It’s stupid to grieve for might-have-beens.)

~

Sokka surprises her, sometimes. He _learns_.

He learns that she’s not fragile, he learns that she’s not at his beck and call, he learns to acknowledge that she’s not some helpless thing who can’t fight. The Kyoshi Warriors are probably the best thing that’s ever happened to him, but it’s not all on them. After all, he got down on his knees and admitted that he was _wrong_.

Once, long ago, Katara thought that she could love her brother, but not admire him.

Apparently, time is out to prove her wrong. This once, she’s glad of it.

~

Some things, you can’t fix. Some people, you simply can’t reach.

It still hurts.

Zuko—Zuko _believed_ her. She knows he did. She knows he thought she could heal him, heal his scar.

And he still left. Still turned against Aang.

It’s true, then. She’s not cut out to be a healer. Aang’s lightning-wound, yes, but spirit water helps, and anyway, that’s not the kind of healing she wants to wield. If she can’t heal people, really help them, stop them from hurting, then what’s the _point_?

It’s his fault, she knows, his choice, even if her inability to heal him is part of it. Nothing to do with her. Zuko’s Fire Nation. He’s just not a good person. It’s not her fault they’re all evil murdering scum who seem to think that killing Aang is an amazing thing to do, is it?

(None of that appeases the little girl deep inside her, who ran when her Mommy told her to. Because Katara turned her back on him, she _ran away_, and that means it’s all her fault.)

~

_How could you, Dad? How could you?_

How could he leave them? After their mother? After everything?

How could he leave them _alone_?

Gran-Gran—Gran-Gran is family. But she’s not _family_, not like the four of them, Mom and Dad and Sokka and Katara.

When Dad went, the fractures of their family shattered into tiny shards.

Mom, dead. That hurt, that broke them, but then—

Then they split into pieces.

Dad, off fighting. Sokka, trying to be a warrior. Katara, hoping desperately for a teacher.

All to fight the Fire Nation, all to fight the bastards who _took their Mom_, and they have to stop them, yes, but—

Katara misses her family. _She misses her father._

He left them, he left them all behind, Sokka and her, all alone in their village, and it hurts. Tui and La, it hurts. And hurt? Hurt means rage. Rage at the cause of the hurt.

So she bites her lip, and turns away from him, and holds her anger in check. Until Aang goes, and everything boils—

—and she’s not angry anymore. Not really. Just exhausted, and confused, and in _pain_, and she needs family, she needs someone there—

And how could he, how could he have left them, but it’s over, he’s _here_.

He’s here, and Katara loves her father, and she won’t let their family break. Ever again.

~

Pain, too much pain to stand. Betrayal. Her _own blood_ working against her, working with Hama to destroy her. It’s too much.

It’s too much.

Katara can’t fight. Not when she’s being _controlled _by someone else, when she’s lost the power and the ability to do anything.

She. Can’t. Fight.

She’s a fighter. If she can’t fight, that’s it. It’s over.

The pain flows through her as her limbs bend into savage shapes, her body not her own anymore. Bile rises to her throat at the _violation_, at the way Hama is _using_ her, jerking her around like a puppeteer moving strings, and this is _it_, she’s going to die here, because she can’t fight, _she can’t fight this_—

No. She is Katara, daughter of Kya and Hakoda, and she is a warrior and a waterbender. She will not give in.

There’s one glimpse, just a single glimpse of the Moon, of Yue, of the girl who gave herself up for her people, who loved her brother and—

Power surges through her veins (_thank you, Yue_, her mind whispers), and slowly, slowly, she finds she can move again. It’s difficult, like moving through thick treacle, only twice as painful, her body fighting against her mind—Hama fighting against Katara—but she can move.

She is _free_.

Only it’s never that easy, because Sokka and Aang come blundering in, right into Hama’s trap, and they’re in her control, and she’s trying to make them kill Katara, she won’t fight them, she _can’t_ fight them, they’re her _family_—

_You will regret the day you touched my family_, Katara thinks, with sudden cold clarity. She knows what to do, and she knows how to do it.

Katara lifts her arms, gets into the proper stance, and _bends_.

The wall breaks, and the ocean gushes out, wild, raw power surging through her, roaring as she channels it, directs it all at Hama, who tried to make her hurt her family, and it’s exhilarating, it’s glorious, it’s—

Sick. Katara remembers the pain and the horror and the violation, and suddenly she can’t. She can’t hold it, but she has to, until Hama’s safely put away.

Katara’s always been good at soldering on, and that’s what saves her as she stands there, willing herself to not let go, fighting against her instincts, this time, fighting against the truth as she hold Hama in check.

For her family, she’ll do this. She’ll do _anything_.

An eon and half later, there are voices and noises and shuffling and footsteps. Then Hama is gone, they’ve got her, she’ll be brought to justice.

And Katara?

Katara sinks to her knees, and cries.

~

“He made his choice,” Sokka tells her, after the disastrous invasion. “And he’s not gonna fight, so he’ll be safe.”

His voice is weak and wavering, and Katara knows he’s trying to convince himself as much as—more, really—than he’s trying to convince her.

“I know, Sokka,” she says. A hint of irritation’s crept into her voice, but she can’t fight it. Not now, at least.

Not after she’s lost her father. Again.

The blue glow of healing wraps around her hands, later, and she watches the water weave in and out of her fingers, and it should be soothing, but it’s not.

_Your fault,_ it screams. _Your fault. You couldn’t save him._

No. She will_ not_ think that way; she can’t. It was the Fire Nation that took him from her, from them, (and where is he now, what kind of torture is he enduring, no stop that thought right there). They _took him _from them—

Except they didn’t, not really, did they? Not the entire Fire Nation, at least, Katara thinks, her mind flashing back to the kids at the dance party, to Master Piandao, to the village on the river. It’s not _their _fault except in a roundabout way, she knows that now.

But—

The soldiers, they shouldn’t have gone to war, so it _has_ to be their fault, and all those people who were defending the capital, Aang’s the Avatar they knew he is, they should have stood down. _Her father was captured_ because of their stupid instinct to protect their stupid home.

And that’s not fair either, is it? But it has to be, the Fire Nation is _wrong_, and her head _hurts_. And the Fire Nation’s people too, and people are harder than _good_ and _bad_ and _right _and _wrong_, because _everyone_’s a mix of _everything_, there’s Jet and bloodbending (Katara can feel the chill in her veins at even the thought) and Iroh and the people she’s met in the Fire Nation. And all of them are people and it’s confusing.

The Mechanist? He wasn’t a bad person, just scared. Maybe the entire Fire Nation’s scared of what’ll happen if they don’t obey the Fire Lord.

Yes, Katara decides, she can live with that. Sozin’s descendants (except Iroh, obviously) are the reason everything happened; all of the Fire Nation isn’t bad, just some of it. Just like the other nations.

The Fire Nation just had—_has_—bad rulers. And now? They’re going to go _down_.

~

There is a man. There is a man, who is the leader of the Southern Raiders. There is a man, who is the leader of the Southern Raiders, who _killed her mother_.

Katara’s anger overflows. For the second time in her life, the wall breaks.

So much _power_, and this time, it’s not a desperate struggle. This time, there’s nothing between her and the water, nothing at all. Because this man killed her mother.

He deserves to _die._

A black pit is swirling inside her stomach, anger and hate and despair and more anger and hate, held in check for years, now suddenly free and looking for escape, because he’s _the person who killed her mother_.

She looks at him, once before his death. The water in his body calls out to her as she _looks_ at her mother’s killer—

Except he’s not.

He didn’t kill her mother. She’d know that _bastard_ anywhere, and this man isn’t him. Suddenly, it’s too much, and she has to let go.

The wall comes back the moment her grip loosens, leaving a gaping hole inside her, a loss so desperate she finds herself aching for the power of the ocean that she’d held inside her just a few seconds ago.

And then reality washes in, and—

She used bloodbending, she used Hama’s terrible, twisted—technique, she’d call it, except that word’s not nearly dreadful enough—on a man who—isn’t innocent, probably, but whose crimes she doesn’t even _know_. She _violated_ him. Not rape, yes, but maybe this is worse, and she can’t—

It’s wrong.

Zuko’s voice echoes, as if from far away. She answers him, somehow, but everything’s numb, everything feels dead. It shouldn’t be this way. It shouldn’t _be_ this way.

Maybe he deserved it, and maybe her mother’s killer deserves it, but Katara finds that she can’t do it. She’ll kill him, yes, but not this way.

Never again.

~

It’s easier, this time, to let the hate flow. Maybe practice makes perfect, after all, but Katara doesn’t care, _can’t_ care. All she knows is that all the water in the entire world is at her fingertips, and she can let it all go, let everything at that—that _monster_, and _destroy _him.

_All the power in the world_, she thinks, and bends her wrist just so, sending millions of ice daggers down at his face, looking deep into his eyes the way he must’ve looked into her mother’s just before he killed her—

And she can’t.

The ice melts, and drops.

She can’t.

That man is empty, a coward, a sniveling worm, and she _can’t_. She hates him, but she can’t kill him. She _refuses_ to kill him.

_Revenge is a two-headed viper_, Aang said. And maybe he’s right (except Katara knows he’s not, the world doesn’t work that way) but it’s not because revenge will come back to haunt you, or whatever else he believes.

The hardest, best revenge is to let him _go_. It won’t do anything to that pitiful man if she kills him, and it’s not that she can’t—

(and that thought scares her much more than she’s willing to admit)

—but that she _can_.

_I won’t be what you made me into_, Katara thinks. _And I won’t let you go this easily. You will suffer in your knowledge of what you’ve done._

~

Carefully, out of the corner of her eye, she looks at Zuko.

He’s steering Appa, his movements carefully measured, but he’s obviously somewhere else, staring off into the distance. Which shouldn’t be a bad thing, but now Katara’s wondering _why_ he’s not here, mentally, and—

“Are you scared of me?”

“What?” Zuko jumps a little, and Katara can see the cloth tightening across his shoulders as his back tenses.

_Stupid question_, she berates herself. _Of course he is. But don’t give him ideas._

“Nothing.”

Zuko half-turns around, the reins bunched up in one hand. “You asked whether I’m scared of you, right?”

“No—” Katara begins, because she can’t face this talk, she can’t, but he’s heard her, hasn’t he, and what kind of warrior would she be if she didn’t face his anger or fear or whatever fair and square? “Yes.”

“Is this about Yon Rha?”

Katara doesn’t reply. He can make his own surmises.

“It is, isn’t it?”

Still no reply, but she stares at him, and wonders whether her eyes are hard, or whether she just looks like a lost little girl crying for her Mommy.

Zuko meets her eyes squarely. “I’m not scared of you, not really.”

Katara clutches the side of Appa’s saddle. What?! She’d steeled herself for the terrible, terrible answer she knew would come, but now—

“But you _saw_ what happened. What I did.”

It comes out angrier than she intended it to, but that’s fine. Better angry than terrified and confused.

“Do you _want_ me to be scared?”

That wasn’t the question she was expecting. “I...don’t know.”

Zuko sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I—I’m not frightened, I guess, because you _stopped_.” At Katara’s questioning noise, he continues. “I’ve seen monsters, Katara. Most of my _family _are monsters. _I_ a—was a monster, at one point. And they’re nothing like you, believe me. Not because of their skills or level of ability or intelligence or whatever, but because they don’t know when to stop, they don’t have a conscience.” The deep breath he takes before he continues is visible in the rise and fall of his shoulders. “You—you have the power, yes, the ability to destroy, but you could have used that power, and you didn’t. That’s what makes you different from them.”

“Oh.” Kataea bites her lip. She doesn’t know what to think.

But Zuko is looking at her, still open and raw, so she smiles at him tentatively. “Thank you?”

He smiles back.

It’s a start.


End file.
